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1. Search out the trigger point areas using a massage tool. An important point to note is that where your body hurts the most may not be the source of the pain. In my case my neck and jaw hurt the most, but my trigger points were located under my arms pits and in my legs, especially my thighs.
   
   
2. Moist heat is helpful for relaxing muscles. Warm showers worked well for me.
   
   
3. Apply counter pressure to the trigger points to loosen them up. For myself and both of my sons, who also have problems with tight muscles, this technique works amazingly well.
   
   

   The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook Your Self-Treatment Guide for Pain Relief by Clair Davies. For acute pain from fibromyalgia, the best short term treatment I found for immediate relief was in the trigger pont therapy. The variation of the steps I used from this book were:

   
   
   
4. Follow the counter pressure session with a stretching / gentle yoga session to relax and lengthen tight muscles. If yoga or any other exercise hurts, I found it is better to skip it. Before I found a PT who really helped me, I had other physical therapists tell me to "work through the pain". Those were not the PTs who ever helped me - they just made me worse. Pain is your body's way of telling you "that hurts - don't do that". I found that pain during exercise just led to more pain.
   
   
5. One great piece of advice I did get from a physical therapist was that whatever you do today will determine your pain level tomorrow. For me, I have found this to be true. If I spend a day eating a lot of junk food, working on the computer and not doing my fibromyalgia treatment routine, then I pay for it by being sore the next day. However, if I spend a day eating high magnesium, whole foods made from scratch combined with lots of stretching, yoga and trigger point therapy, then the next day I feel pretty good.
   
   
6. How to tell if the steps are working - I've experimented by just doing my treatment sessions on only one leg and then taking a walk around the block. It's amazing how much more relaxed the leg that has had the trigger point therapy and stretches feels. It's no wonder that people with fibromyalgia also often have Chronic Fatigue syndrome. When your muscles are really tight, it takes much more effort to move them. I didn't realize just how tight my muscles were most of my life until I found these ways to get them loosened up.
   
   
7. For longer term pain solutions I had to balance my muscles better and improve my body alignment. I also had to change my diet to provide my body with more of the nutrients responsible for relaxing muscles after a contraction. Without the right biochemical triggers, contracted muscles are unable to relax and will stay in a contracted state for a very long time. For more on this topic, see my section on Fibromyalgia Diet.

Fibromyalgia Treatment - Part II, Assorted Tips to Avoid Living in Chronic Pain